| Some months ago I was asked to write an account of our statehood fight to be published in the Centennial Year as a joint project of the University of Alaska and Alaska's Purchase Centennial Commission. This was a fascinating assignment, which I accepted as a labor of love, perhaps unthinkingly and without an immediate realization of the scope that such a work should properly have, and of the problem of adding this to my other duties. |
| At the time, my conversations with B. G. Olson at the University, who was in charge of this project, indicated that there would be several contributors, primarily those who had taken a major part in the statehood fight: Bob Bartlett, of course, who was our Delegate during all those years from the real initiation of the final statehood drive in the middle '40's, when he took over the torch from Tony Dimond, to its successful conclusion in 1959-years in which he carried the entire Congressional legislative burden, not merely for statehood, but for all other Alaskan concerns; William A. Egan, Governor, pioneer in an effort to introduce statehood legislation on the Territorial level in his first session in the Alaska Legislature in 1941, an attempt which failed only because he was a little ahead of his time and his fellow-legislators were not as advanced on that issue as he was;1 and Ralph Rivers, who, along with Bill Egan and me, constituted the Alaska-Tennessee Plan delegation in Congress and, prior to that, as Territorial Attorney-General, had served most helpfully in drafting revenue and other legislation for our Territory which would be instrumental in approaching our statehood goals. |
| With this presumed division of labor, it seemed to me that while as inclusive as possible within limitations of time and space of all statehood activities, each contributor should concentrate particularly on his own activities. This I have attempted to do. It should be clear, however, that no one person, and no two or three or half a dozen persons, can be credited with the achievement of statehood for Alaska, whatever might have been their individual efforts. The credit belongs to all the people of Alaska, who, in varying degrees and to the full extent of their powers and opportunities, backed the battle to achieve for Alaska, long-neglected stepchild in the national family, the realization of that most basic of American principles-government by consent of the governed. |
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